The invention relates to a method of transferring data from one application to another in an application handling unit controlling a plurality of applications. The invention furthermore relates to such an application handling unit and especially a handset or a portable phone.
The copy and paste function is generally known from the applications available in Windows.RTM. from Microsoft Corporation.RTM.. However, the copy and paste function can be used to copy text strings from one application to another or from one document in one application to another document in the same application or from one location in a document to another location in the same document.
The CPU of the computer uses a RAM as a primary storage to hold programs and data for all applications--at least the open ones. When selecting a text string and copying this string to the clipboard, this string will be stored in a space in the RAM specially dedicated as a clipboard memory. The cutting operation is basically the same, but the selected text string will be copied to the clipboard, whereas it will be removed from the original file/document.
Hereby the contents in the clipboard will be present for pasting even though the application from which the string was copied will be closed. When moving the cursor to a new position either in the same file or in another file, the contents of the clipboard may be pasted to this position. The contents of the clipboard will not be affected by the pasting, whereby the pasting may be repeated several times. This type of cut/copy and paste operation is excellent when handling text documents by means of e.g. a Personal Computer (PC) having a full keypad and a mouse for moving the cursor.
However, in a portable phone, the number of input key s compared with a PC is very low, and cursor navigation keys only allow a limited navigation through a text string, e.g. an SMS message, so that it will be easier to rewrite a word than to use a copy and paste function.